GETTING SET UP: SCENARIO ONE – IN THE STUDIO
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channel inputs. Make sure the POD A.I.R. switch is set to “Direct.”
You should be all ready to play your guitar and hear it POD-processed, and lay
down a track on your recorder. Then you can play back the track and switch amps,
effects, whatever – welcome to the digital software revolution! And for an even
more revolutionary experience, be sure to check out the MIDI Mania section
below, plus the Deep Editing & MIDI Control chapter to learn how to
automate it all. By the way: don’t monitor the pre-POD and post-POD guitar
signals at the same time, as you’ll get comb filtering that will mess up your sound.
(Scary, huh?)
Level Headed
When setting levels in any of the above scenarios, watch carefully for the CLIP
indicator to light on your POD (it’s just under the Bank Up/Down buttons).
This lets you know you’re clipping the POD input and so you need to turn down
the signal you’re feeding it. You should also be sure that you don’t send too little
level to POD. As with any audio device, this will result in poor performance.
Radiation Alert
You will also likely find, especially if you are using a guitar with single coil pickups,
that it is quite easy to pick up some serious noise from any computer monitor you
might have in your studio. CRT displays are, after all, just special purpose ray guns
that shoot photons at you all day long. Your guitar pickups receive and amplify the
electro-magnetic fields that your display radiates, and you hear this in your audio
signal as buzz and hum. Moving farther from the CRT, and turning your guitar so it
is does not face the computer’s display directly, will minimize this problem. But if
you find yourself in a tight studio setup, needing to lay down some quick tracks,
and being pestered by CRT-induced buzz, you may find it helpful to do as we have
sometimes done: set up your track to record and start your pre-roll; reach up and
flick your computer monitor’s power switch off; record your guitar part; stop your
recording, flick the monitor back on, and check out the buzz-free playback.
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